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# The decline of Americans on non‑US boards
- URL: https://www.vesterbrief.com/ami-director-go-home/
- Published: 2026-09-29T08:24:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-29T08:24:46.000Z
- Author: Steffen Brenner

## A new brand of America

In July 2025, after a push from Donald Trump, Coca-Cola announced a cane-sugar version of its drink. With America itself, he has tried something similar: a new recipe for an old, strong brand. In its first year, his second administration put tariffs on most of America's trading partners, called Canada a potential 51st state and, in January 2026, threatened eight European countries with tariffs over Greenland. New recipes for old brands can go badly. In 1985 Coca-Cola replaced its 99-year-old formula with a sweeter one, and loyal drinkers revolted.

After years of fascination, America's brand has weakened sharply: in the Anholt Nation Brands Index it fell to 14th place in 2025, after ranking first every year from 2005 to 2016.

People began to pull back from contact with the United States, and I hear it in ordinary conversations. A Danish mother told me that her daughter was set to spend her high-school exchange year there; the family chose Canada instead. Danish students are pulling back too: applications to study in the US at the University of Copenhagen fell 30% in the year to early 2026, and DTU sent about 40% fewer students there than a year earlier. So did scholars: the Academy of Management, the largest association of management scholars, drew nearly 10,000 attendees to Philadelphia this summer, against more than 13,000 in Copenhagen a year earlier. In Canada, the share seeing the US as a reliable partner fell from 83% in 2022 to 35%.

Institutions are reassessing too, whether from resentment or precaution: the European Commission now gives staff burner phones for trips to Washington, and the Academy of Management moved its 2027 meeting from Seattle to Vienna.

## Economic ambassadors in the boardroom

For decades, the Western world seemed to know only one direction: integration. World trade rose sharply and firms came to be owned across borders; as a result, their boards took on more members from abroad. These directors helped their firms reach foreign markets, investors and know-how, and they also acted as economic ambassadors for their home countries. To see how international boards became, let's look at all board appointments at listed firms in Europe, including the UK, and the United States, and at the share of non-domestic appointments.¹

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/32/f5/32f55e2f-cc04-4e98-8804-ab2862d3805b/content/images/2026/09/international-appointments-v2.png)

Home-registered and home-listed firms in Europe incl. UK and the US, own calculation · 2001 to 2024

International appointments rose on both sides of the Atlantic: in the United States their share nearly doubled, and in Europe more than a third of new directors now come from abroad. Americans are the largest foreign group in Europe, taking about one in seven international appointments against one in ten for the British, a share that has held steady since the early 2000s. American appointments grew in step with globalization.

## What disintegration looks like

To understand what a crisis can do to boards, we only need to look at Russia.

Within a year of the invasion, the share of international directors on Russian boards fell by a third. Western directors left fastest: two in three British directors went, and about four in ten Germans; Americans left more slowly. Non-Western directors, many from former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Armenia, mostly stayed, and few newcomers arrived from China, India or the Gulf.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/32/f5/32f55e2f-cc04-4e98-8804-ab2862d3805b/content/images/2026/09/russia-international-directors-v2.png)

Russian-HQ listed firms, own calculation · Jun 2010 to Dec 2023

In China and Hong Kong, international directors gained ground until 2007, reaching about a quarter of board seats. After that, Chinese firms could draw on a growing pool of home-grown executives, many of them trained abroad, and the institutional environment became less accommodating to foreign directors: from 2016 the Communist Party had its role written into the articles of association of state-owned listed firms, and security rules raised the personal risk for foreigners, from Hong Kong's National Security Law in 2020 to the revised counter-espionage law of 2023\. The tide turned slowly. The international share of board seats slid from 26% in 2007 to 18% today.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/32/f5/32f55e2f-cc04-4e98-8804-ab2862d3805b/content/images/2026/09/china-hk-international-directors-v2.png)

China- and Hong Kong-HQ listed firms, own calculation · 1998 to Jun 2026

The exchange was never symmetric: the stream in the other direction was always small and has barely changed. Directors with a Chinese background have taken only around 1% of new board appointments in Europe and the United States for the past decade.

## Trump 2.0 in the boardroom

When Trump returned to the White House, world trade had already passed its peak; the American share of new directors on non-US boards had begun to fall. The chart shows Americans' share among directors joining non-US boards; the dashed line marks the 2004-22 average.²

Outside the US, Americans made up about 5% of new directors from 2004 to 2022\. Since 2023, their share has been lower than in any earlier year, between 4.1% and 4.4%. The turn began before Trump's return. In Canada, where opinion of the US fell furthest, the line keeps falling and now sits about a sixth below its average. Only in Europe does the line stay close to its average; the change there runs through departures, which the chart does not show: Americans have made up a larger share of those leaving European boards since 2023.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/32/f5/32f55e2f-cc04-4e98-8804-ab2862d3805b/content/images/2026/09/americans-joining-boards-v2.png)

Directors joining boards of continuing listed firms (US-quoted firms excluded), own calculation with imputed nationality · 2004 to Jun 2026

Denmark shows a modest decline. American directors held about 40 seats on Danish listed boards at the end of 2021 and about 26 in mid-2026\. Three events account for much of the change: the overhaul of Novo Nordisk's board at the extraordinary general meeting on November 14, 2025, the board renewal at Zealand Pharma, and four delistings of firms with American directors.

## Anger or legal reach?

Why are fewer Americans joining? While resentment is one reason a nomination committee might look past an American candidate, US law offers a second. Sanctions, export controls and anti-bribery rules apply to US citizens wherever they work, including on the board of a Danish or Canadian company.

Three sets of rules matter most. OFAC sanctions forbid US persons to approve or facilitate deals with sanctioned parties, and OFAC can penalize a non-US company that causes a US person to breach them. The export controls of October 2022 barred US persons from supporting advanced chip production in China, and American executives at Chinese chipmakers stepped back in large numbers, according to press reports at the time. At AMEC, a Shanghai-listed maker of chip equipment, two directors with US citizenship resigned citing personal reasons; the chairman later gave up his US passport. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act covers US citizens acting as agents of a foreign company, although the administration has narrowed its enforcement since 2025.

For a firm with a US listing, dollar business or an American subsidiary, one more American on the board adds little exposure. For a firm with few other US ties, an American director can add a distinct channel of US legal exposure.

Under the second Trump administration, that reach has also become political. In March 2025, US embassies asked suppliers in France, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Spain to certify that they ran no diversity programs in breach of US law; the State Department then clarified that the demand applied to companies controlled by a US entity that employ US citizens. For a firm outside the US, American ties, including American directors, can bring it within range of such demands.

The data cannot settle why American representation among new appointments is falling, but resentment is a strong contender. If legal exposure were driving it, the decline should be larger in sanctions-exposed sectors and at firms with few other US ties. It isn’t: the American share fell by about the same amount in other sectors, and no more at firms with few US ties. Changed investment patterns offer another possibility, but I find no sign of that either: the decline is about as large among directors tied to investment firms as among other directors. Geography fits the resentment story better. The decline is strongest in Canada, which faced both tariffs and talk of becoming the 51st state.

## The cost to US soft power

Stephen Walt argued in Foreign Policy in May 2026 that the administration was spending America's soft power by attacking even staunchly pro-American countries such as Canada and Denmark. So far, he noted, foreigners have kept apart America as a country and the actions of its leaders.

I think the board data show that separation starting to crumble. The effect, so far, is modest but outside its historical range: in Canada, and in a record-low American share of new directors outside the US. The trend may just have started.

Coca-Cola brought back the original recipe after 79 days. Whether American directors return if Washington changes its recipe may take considerably longer to learn.

---

*Data: BoardEx via WRDS, listed firms in North America, Europe, the UK and the rest of the world, 2001 to June 2026; own calculations. Surveys: Pew Research Center, Global Attitudes 2026; Anholt Nation Brands Index 2025\. Conference attendance: Academy of Management.*

*¹ I count an appointee as international if the director holds a job in another country or is of foreign origin, and include only firms registered, headquartered and listed in the same country, which excludes, for example, American companies that moved their legal seat to Ireland. The Russian figures cover all Russian-headquartered listed firms, since many large ones hold their shares through entities registered abroad. Origin is the recorded nationality; where that is missing, the country of the first university degree; and where that is missing too, the country of the first job. For Americans the rule is stricter: without a recorded nationality, a director counts as American only with a first degree from a US university and at least one role in the US. Tested on directors whose nationality is recorded, the rule misclassifies some individuals, but the errors largely cancel: it counts about as many Americans as there are. The chart of Americans joining boards uses a calibrated probability instead (footnote ²). The chart of international appointments counts only appointees whose origin rests on nationality, education or a job abroad, and ends in 2024 because recent records are incomplete (footnote ²). The other charts cover all listed firms headquartered in the country or region shown; the chart of Americans joining boards excludes firms quoted in the US. The Russian series ends in 2023 because few Russian boards have been updated since; the Chinese seat series and the joiners chart run to mid-2026, because seats are mostly held by directors with complete records and the joiners chart estimates missing nationality. Among firms that appointed directors in both 2001-05 and 2020-24, the international share rose by 9 points in Europe, the full rise, and by 4 points in the United States, about half of it; the rest of the US rise comes from firms listed later. BoardEx also records more education over time, which makes foreign-born directors easier to identify.*

*² Totals of seats and appointments shift with the set of listed firms: the IPO wave of 2021 brought many firms with American directors, and since 2023 delistings and takeovers have removed more of them than new listings add. To separate appointments from these changes, the chart of Americans joining boards follows only firms listed at both the start and the end of each year. Adding departures does not change the picture: from 2004 to 2022 Americans made up about the same share of directors leaving and joining boards outside the US; since 2023 they have made up a larger share of those leaving than of those joining, outside the US as a whole and in Europe, and in Canada since 2025\. BoardEx records the nationality of new directors with a lag: only about 28% of appointees outside the US in 2025-26 have a recorded nationality, against 45% in 2016\. Counting recorded Americans alone would show Denmark falling from 5.5% to 2.2% of appointments, an artifact. For directors without a recorded nationality, I estimate the probability of being American from a US first degree and a career at US-based organizations, calibrated on 2016-21 appointees whose nationality is known. A manual check of the Danish appointees in 2025-26, including the boards of Napatech, Lundbeck and Damora, supports the adjusted figures. A narrower rule, which counts directors without recorded nationality as American only if all their degrees and their first job are in the US, shows the same pattern: a sharper fall in Canada and the world outside the US, and none in Europe.*